Boycott Haider, Or See If It Captures All That Is Rotten In Kashmir?

Does Haider’s portrayal of the Kashmir issue earn it the anti-national tag?

WrittenBy:Sheikh Saaliq
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While I write this, #Boycott Haider is the top trend on Twitter. The so-called ultra-nationalists have taken to all forms of social media – starting a marathon of hate messages against the film. Reason: because reality is harsh. Yet, somewhere, amidst all the boycott chest beating, some have appreciated what is a piece of fine cinema – depicting what happened in Kashmir during a time nobody has dared talk about.

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Not much has changed in Kashmir since the emergence of armed revolution in the early 90s. Kashmir, then a troubled state, still remains the same – an open cage. People are dying. Boys are being tortured. Unknown graves are still emerging. Kashmir, a beautiful piece of land as shown in Bollywood movies, continues to burn. The depiction of all this still remains minimal in any form of communication across India, cinema pretty much being last in line. Enter Haider; a Vishal Bharadwaj adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, co-written by Basharat Peer, an acclaimed journalist from Kashmir and author of Curfewed Night.

Haider chronicles the state of affairs in conflict-ridden Kashmir of 1995, when armed struggle was at its peak. It documents the life of a middle class family, weaving the story through different issues prevalent during the times.

As a movie, Haider is one of the finest out of Bollywood. Visually stunning and haunting to the core, Haider lingers in its own madness – crafted by the sheer brilliance of Bharadwaj. There is pain, frustration, anguish and rage in every frame. It brings out harsh truths about Kashmir, mostly curtained till now by the veil of biased projection. This dark depiction of Kashmir is haunting.  And in portraying this dark side, Haider the film wins hands down.

One can even claim that at the heart of it, Haider is not about its central characters. It is about those unnamed people who weren’t even part of the main plot. It’s about the common Kashmiri. It’s about their lost identity. Haider goes beyond the clichés on Kashmir.

In the movie, you aren’t made to listen to beautiful azaans in the morning. But as it used to happen in the 90s, you find yourself hearing the directives for an early morning crackdown – people holding their identity cards close to their chest, hoping they will return home safe. There are no snow-clad mountains or evergreen gardens, but dark dingy narrow lanes where once blood spilled. People don’t dance in fancy attires, but wander around in utter perplexity.

Haider also borrows many incidents from the brutal history of Kashmir. A scene where Shahid Kapoor tries to find his untraceable father in a truck load of dead bodies and a young guy wakes up, finds himself alive and dances in absolute madness, is something which supposedly did happen in one incident in the early 90s.

There are scenes in the movie which not only are a mirror of India’s war crimes in Kashmir but also a sad remembrance for those who faced the wrath of it. It talks about the plebiscite promise made by Pandit Nehru, forgotten by the Indian state. It shows what happened inside the infamous Indian Army torture chambers, how innocents were killed and later labeled militants, the formation of pro-militia groups and how one’s identity was always under suspicion in Kashmir. Not only that, the issue of mass-graves, half-widows and enforced disappearances is also focused on. Even the much-controversial AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) gets a strong mention in the movie, and how it has given utmost impunity to the perpetrators – which in movie and reality stands out as the Indian Army.

But at a certain point the film establishes the reason for armed struggle in Kashmir as inteqaam or revenge, which doesn’t hold much meaning on real ground. However, the reality which the film portrays is something which should be lauded.

Haider is a saga of reality – despite that, given what the state has gone through, it’s only a peep into what really happened. Reality is worse, much more brutal. The film doesn’t break ground when it comes to portraying the reality of Kashmir in Indian cinema, nor is it a beginning. To put it bluntly, Haider is just a brave attempt at telling a story on which people chose to turn the page, skipping and moving on all these years.

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